Re: not for illiterate,s
- From: Jon Schild <jjs@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:21:53 -0700
Taki Kogoma wrote:
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:48:59 -0400, Stephen Rush <sjrush@xxxxxxxxxxx>
allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:10:26 +0000, Dennis L. McKiernan wrote:
Neither comma nor apostrophe, but instead plural without either: "Illiterates."
Anybody know where the idea that all English plural nouns take an
apostrophe came from? I can understand homonym confusion; a spellchecker
will tell you that "their", "there" and "they're" are all correct, even
though two of them will be wrong for a given use. I can even understand
the "its"/"it's" fumble, since most possessives do take an apostrophe. But why did people on Usenet (and Web boards) start sticking apostrophes
into nouns that have standard plural forms? It's even beginning to ooze
into print; I recently saw a sign that read "EMPLOYEE'S ONLY."
My theory is that they somehow locked onto a rule along the lines of:
"To append an 's' to any word, use an appostraphe."
Yea, it comes from people who can't comprehend that the apostrophe means something, rather than just being something you stick on with the 's'. I have actually seen "school bu's" written out by such a person.
.
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